Lori Hassin, 52, of Merrick, took a cell phone picture of a regular lobster and the yellow lobster, now named "Patty," after Marinello's wife.

"That will make my students very happy," said Hassin, a New York City schoolteacher. "We've been doing ocean animals, but they didn't color it that way."

Robert Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, said the yellow lobster is a "rare genetic occurrence."

"It's a genetic trait just like eye color in people," he said.

Bayer, who has 30 years' experience in lobster research, said such lobsters show up just two or three times each year. He described occasional sightings of other kinds: blue lobsters, red lobsters and white albino lobsters, which he said are the rarest.